- Jun 10, 2010
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There's a lot of debate about whether you should build massive links to your money site or not. Some people will say doing so will get you in the Google sandbox. Some also say to only blast aged domains. Others claim to only build links to their money site and the Sandbox is only a myth. A popular argument is, "If spamming back links to your website hurts you, then people would do that to their competition."
Here's my theory on the Google Sandbox: "The Sandbox is for domains with little traffic." Not pretty ground breaking information, I know, but here's my belief in the sandbox and when you should or should not build massive back links.
What is a back link?
A back link is to signify that somebody on the internet had some interest in your webpage they thought deserved to be talked about or referenced. The more links you have pointing to your domain or webpage, the more "authoritative" you appear about the subject matter (or keywords).
Why Traffic matters
In order to obtain these natural back links you need visitors coming to your site. In theory, the more visitors you have the more likely they are to create a back link for you. This is where people start to get themselves into trouble. They have a domain they start blasting away thousands of links to, but they only receive a handful of visits per day. Let's say you have 5 visitors per day, but Google is finding you are creating 1,000 or even 100 back links per day to your site. Doesn't this look a little suspicious? How likely is it those handful of visitors could actually be creating that many back links for you? Sure, if one of these visitors had a website with 1,000 pages and they posted a link to your site so it appeared on every one of their pages, then yes, you would have 1,000 links, but they all would come from the same domain. 1,000 links from the same domain is not as big as 1,000 links from different domains. That same person is highly unlikely to produce thousands or hundreds of links for you.
I'm sure Google has a good estimate on how much traffic your website is receiving, Alexa.com seems to do just fine providing that information. If they see your small web site is bringing in thousands of back links, then how could it not be suspicious? Especially if all of those back links are from similar ScrapeBox or Xrumer blasts.
Young and Aged Domains
You hear people claiming to only blast "aged" domains. I ask, what is an aged domain? What's the date range, how many months old does your domain have to be? This is also debatable. Do you honestly think Google has logic in place that if a domain between 6-9 months old should only have X amount of back links while a domain which is 24 months old can have 4X the amount of back links?
In hindsight, the older a domain is, the more likely it should have acquired back links over its existence. A domain that has only been around for 2 months shouldn't have many back links. Why is this? The older domain over time should have more visitors than a 2 month old domain. As I stated above, the more visitors you have, the more likelihood for back links.
When to SPAM young domains?
You hear people claim, "Oh my domain is only 3 months old and I build thousands of back links to it daily or monthly and I don't have problems with the SandBox." I always wondered what their Search Engine Ranking Position was and for what keywords they were ranking for. If you're website is already ranking on Page 1 or 2 and is a couple months old, then I don't think you will have problems. As long as you are not trying to create an unrealistic amount of links for your keyword.
Website A could be on Page 2 trying to rank for a 1,000,000 a month keyword search while Website B is on Page 2 trying to rank for a 1,000 a month keyword search and both owners start building the same number of back links, I would guess Website B is in deeper trouble. Why? Because Website A is ranking for a term that has more traffic, while Website B has much fewer people searching for it.
I believe it's okay to spam young domains if you are already ranking well. I have a website currently ranking in the top 3 for a 90k Exact search word. My site was registered back in the beginning of Feb. 2011 and the website who is #1 was registered nearly a month later. Last month, as I sat at position 3 in the SERPS, I fired up ScrapeBox and loaded in a 1 million list I obtained from BHW. I blasted my money site and ended up with over 120K Auto Approved links. I saw no movement in my SERPS, neither positive nor negative. I imagine Google saw my links and ignored most of them because they were irrelevant or poor back links. I was already ranking well at this point. Google already had a good understanding of my site because they already had me at position 3. I know if I wasn't ranking better Google might have thought differently.
Trying to SandBox your competition
Here's my take on SandBoxing your competition. How do you know who is your competition? Do you type in your keyword and see who is ranked higher than you? Do you only consider positions 1-5 your direct competition? I think it's hard to SandBox your competition because Google has already placed "value" on those sites and gave them the ranking they have. They are already ranking well and the target has been placed on them as the websites to beat, so anyone could try to SandBox them. If those sites did their SEO I think it would be hard to hurt their rankings. Now, if you were able to spot one of these soon to be ranked #1 sites, while they were just getting started then you would have a better chance. But that's like trying to find a needle among needles in a haystack. You don't know which sites are just getting started and are climbing the SERPs, therefore you can't see the threat coming. You don't actually know they are your direct competition until it's too late.
Conclusion
Hopefully I did an alright job of explaining my thought and some of this makes a little sense. To summarize it all, I think Google has a good idea of how many back links certain sites should have and maintain given the amount of search volume your keywords have.
END RANT.
Here's my theory on the Google Sandbox: "The Sandbox is for domains with little traffic." Not pretty ground breaking information, I know, but here's my belief in the sandbox and when you should or should not build massive back links.
What is a back link?
A back link is to signify that somebody on the internet had some interest in your webpage they thought deserved to be talked about or referenced. The more links you have pointing to your domain or webpage, the more "authoritative" you appear about the subject matter (or keywords).
Why Traffic matters
In order to obtain these natural back links you need visitors coming to your site. In theory, the more visitors you have the more likely they are to create a back link for you. This is where people start to get themselves into trouble. They have a domain they start blasting away thousands of links to, but they only receive a handful of visits per day. Let's say you have 5 visitors per day, but Google is finding you are creating 1,000 or even 100 back links per day to your site. Doesn't this look a little suspicious? How likely is it those handful of visitors could actually be creating that many back links for you? Sure, if one of these visitors had a website with 1,000 pages and they posted a link to your site so it appeared on every one of their pages, then yes, you would have 1,000 links, but they all would come from the same domain. 1,000 links from the same domain is not as big as 1,000 links from different domains. That same person is highly unlikely to produce thousands or hundreds of links for you.
I'm sure Google has a good estimate on how much traffic your website is receiving, Alexa.com seems to do just fine providing that information. If they see your small web site is bringing in thousands of back links, then how could it not be suspicious? Especially if all of those back links are from similar ScrapeBox or Xrumer blasts.
Young and Aged Domains
You hear people claiming to only blast "aged" domains. I ask, what is an aged domain? What's the date range, how many months old does your domain have to be? This is also debatable. Do you honestly think Google has logic in place that if a domain between 6-9 months old should only have X amount of back links while a domain which is 24 months old can have 4X the amount of back links?
In hindsight, the older a domain is, the more likely it should have acquired back links over its existence. A domain that has only been around for 2 months shouldn't have many back links. Why is this? The older domain over time should have more visitors than a 2 month old domain. As I stated above, the more visitors you have, the more likelihood for back links.
When to SPAM young domains?
You hear people claim, "Oh my domain is only 3 months old and I build thousands of back links to it daily or monthly and I don't have problems with the SandBox." I always wondered what their Search Engine Ranking Position was and for what keywords they were ranking for. If you're website is already ranking on Page 1 or 2 and is a couple months old, then I don't think you will have problems. As long as you are not trying to create an unrealistic amount of links for your keyword.
Website A could be on Page 2 trying to rank for a 1,000,000 a month keyword search while Website B is on Page 2 trying to rank for a 1,000 a month keyword search and both owners start building the same number of back links, I would guess Website B is in deeper trouble. Why? Because Website A is ranking for a term that has more traffic, while Website B has much fewer people searching for it.
I believe it's okay to spam young domains if you are already ranking well. I have a website currently ranking in the top 3 for a 90k Exact search word. My site was registered back in the beginning of Feb. 2011 and the website who is #1 was registered nearly a month later. Last month, as I sat at position 3 in the SERPS, I fired up ScrapeBox and loaded in a 1 million list I obtained from BHW. I blasted my money site and ended up with over 120K Auto Approved links. I saw no movement in my SERPS, neither positive nor negative. I imagine Google saw my links and ignored most of them because they were irrelevant or poor back links. I was already ranking well at this point. Google already had a good understanding of my site because they already had me at position 3. I know if I wasn't ranking better Google might have thought differently.
Trying to SandBox your competition
Here's my take on SandBoxing your competition. How do you know who is your competition? Do you type in your keyword and see who is ranked higher than you? Do you only consider positions 1-5 your direct competition? I think it's hard to SandBox your competition because Google has already placed "value" on those sites and gave them the ranking they have. They are already ranking well and the target has been placed on them as the websites to beat, so anyone could try to SandBox them. If those sites did their SEO I think it would be hard to hurt their rankings. Now, if you were able to spot one of these soon to be ranked #1 sites, while they were just getting started then you would have a better chance. But that's like trying to find a needle among needles in a haystack. You don't know which sites are just getting started and are climbing the SERPs, therefore you can't see the threat coming. You don't actually know they are your direct competition until it's too late.
Conclusion
Hopefully I did an alright job of explaining my thought and some of this makes a little sense. To summarize it all, I think Google has a good idea of how many back links certain sites should have and maintain given the amount of search volume your keywords have.
END RANT.
